lowered her voice conspiratorially, “knowing what we have heard about parties here!”
Miss Lucinda blushed, remembering her previous remarks about Freddie Dilbridge and his dissolute gatherings. She struggled for an excuse for her presence.
With increasing delight, Charlotte gave it to her.
“It must require a lot of self-sacrifice,” she said soberly. “But I do appreciate that you are determined, at any cost to yourself in embarrassment or even positive danger, that you must discover whatever dreadful thing it was you saw that night.”
“Yes, yes, quite.” Miss Lucinda fastened onto it eagerly. “It is a matter of Christian duty.”
“Has anyone else seen it?” Emily managed to say something at last.
“If they have,” Miss Lucinda said darkly, “they have not said so.”
“Maybe they were too frightened?” Charlotte tried to get to her actual purpose at last. “What did it look like?”
Miss Lucinda was surprised. She had forgotten the actuality. Now she tried to picture it again.
“Evil,” she began, wrinkling her face. “Most evil. It had a green face, like a creature half man and half beast. And there were horns on its head.”
“How appalling,” Charlotte breathed out, suitably impressed. “What manner of horns? Like a cow, or a goat, or-”
“Oh, like a goat,” Miss Lucinda said immediately. “Curling back.”
“And what manner of body?” Charlotte went on. “Did it have two legs like a man, or four like a beast?”
“Two, like a man, and it ran away and leapt over the hedge.”
“Leapt over the hedge?” Charlotte tried not to sound disbelieving.
“Oh, it’s quite a low hedge, just ornamental.” Miss Lucinda was not as impractical as she appeared. “I could have jumped it myself, when I was a girl. Not that I would have, of course!” she added hastily.
“Of course not,” Charlotte agreed, struggling desperately to keep a straight face. The picture of Miss Lucinda taking a flying leap at the garden hedge was too delicious to be denied. “Which way did it go?”
Miss Lucinda did not miss the point.
“This way,” she said firmly. “Down the Walk, toward this end.”
Emily saw Charlotte’s face and rushed to rescue with noises of sympathy and horror.
It took them some time to break away without obvious discourtesy, and when at last they did, with an excuse that they must speak to Selena, Emily turned to Charlotte, pulling her back by the sleeve, in case they were upon Selena before having an opportunity to speak to each other in private.
“What on earth was it?” she hissed. “I thought at first she was inventing most of it, but now I really do believe she saw something. She isn’t lying. I would swear to that.”
Charlotte had already made up her mind.
“Someone dressed up to frighten her,” she answered under her breath, not wanting any passerby to overhear them. Phoebe was only a few yards away, standing with a wan smile, listening to Grace’s misfortunes.
“Away from what?” Emily smiled dazzlingly at Jessamyn as she floated past. “Something here?”
“That’s what we have to find out.” Charlotte added a gesture of greeting. “I wonder if Selena knows,” she went on to Emily.
“We’ll find out.” Emily sailed forward, and Charlotte was obliged to follow. She still disliked Selena, in spite of the admiration for her courage. She faced the unpleasant possibility that her feeling was mainly provoked because Selena had said it was Paul Alaric who had assaulted her. Charlotte most intensely did not wish that to be true. Alaric was here this afternoon. She had not spoken to him yet, but she knew precisely where he was, and that at the moment Jessamyn was drifting casually over toward him in a froth of water-blue lace.
“How pleasant to see you again, Mrs. Pitt,” Selena said coolly. If she was indeed pleased, there was nothing of it in her voice, and her eyes were as remote and chilly as a winter river.
“And in so much more fortunate circumstances.” Charlotte smiled back. Really, she was getting to be a total hypocrite! Whatever was happening to her?
Selena’s face became even colder.
“I am so happy for you that the entire matter is over,” Charlotte continued, goaded on by the profound dislike inside her. “Of course, it was a tragedy, but at least the fear is past, no more mystery.” She allowed her voice to be as cheerful as was decent. “No one need fear anyone else from now on. All is explained and in the open-such a relief.”
“I had not realized you were afraid, Miss Pitt!” Selena looked at her with a distaste that suggested her fear was quite ungrounded, since she could have been in no possible danger.
Charlotte rose to the occasion.
“Of course, I was, and for Emily too. After all, if a woman of decorum and position such as yourself could be molested, who on earth could count themselves safe?”
Selena struggled to think of an answer that was not blatantly rude, and failed.
“And such a relief for the gentlemen,” Charlotte went on relentlessly. “None of them are under suspicion anymore. We know now that not any of them were in the least way guilty. It must be a sad and distressing situation, to be obliged to suspect one’s friends.”
Emily’s fingers were digging into Charlotte’s arm, and she was shaking so hard with suppressed laughter she had to pretend to have a sneezing fit.
“The heat,” Charlotte said sympathetically. “It really is most oppressive. I shouldn’t be surprised if the weather breaks soon and we have a thunderstorm. I love thunderstorms, don’t you?”
“No,” Selena said flatly. “I find them vulgar. Exceedingly so.”
Emily sneezed again violently, and Selena backed away. Algernon Burnon was passing with a sherbet in his hand, and she seized the chance to escape.
Emily came up from her handkerchief.
“You are absolutely appalling!” she said happily. “I’ve never seen her better confounded.”
Charlotte’s mind knew at last what it was that troubled her about Selena.
“You were the first to see her after she was attacked, weren’t you?” she asked soberly.
“Yes. Why?”
“What happened-exactly?”
Emily was slightly surprised.
“I heard her scream. I ran out through the front of the house and saw her. I went to her, naturally, and took her inside. What do you mean? What is it, Charlotte?”
“What did she look like?”
“Look like? Like a woman who has been assaulted of course! Her dress was torn open, and her hair was all over the place-”
“How was her dress torn?” Charlotte insisted.
Emily tried to picture it in her mind. Her hand went up to the left side of her own dress and made as if to rip it.
“Like that?” Charlotte said quickly. “And was it muddy?”
“No, not muddy. There was probably dust, but I didn’t notice. It was hardly the time.”
“But you told me she said it had happened on the grass,” Charlotte pointed out, “by the rose beds.”
“It’s a hot dry summer!” Emily waved her hands. “Anyway, what does it matter?”
“But those flower beds are watered,” Charlotte persisted. “I’ve seen the gardeners doing it. If she had been thrown to the ground-”
“Well, maybe it wasn’t there! Maybe it was on the path. What are you trying to say?” Emily was beginning to understand.
“Emily, if I tore my dress open and pulled my hair out, then came screaming along the road, how would I look different from the way Selena looked that night?”
Emily’s eyes were very clear blue.
“Not at all different,” she said, as perception dawned.
“I don’t think anyone attacked Selena,” Charlotte framed her words with deliberation. “She made it up, to draw attention to herself and to get even with Jessamyn. Only Jessamyn guessed the truth. That was why she pretended to be so sorry for her, and yet it didn’t trouble her at all. She knew Paul Alaric had never touched
